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Monday, January 19, 2015

On to week three

You know it's funny, every year for the last few years I've said something to the effect of "I'm going to blog more this year," and some years I do, some years I don't. It's not that I don't feel like I have things to say, I just get demotivated for no reason. Well, that's not entirely true, and in fact makes me want to read more on the human psyche and the biochemistry behind emotions, I mean, there may actually be something to that whole "toxic people" thing, maybe you really are poisoning yourself the longer you spend around 'em. It's crazy how our minds are able to affect our mental states, both positively and negatively, isn't it? Anyway...

Some interesting things happened going into this year with my training schedule, some changes I was anticipating didn't happen, and some changes I wasn't anticipating did happen (isn't that always how it goes?), so I'm having to rethink my training schedule for this year in order to hit all the points I've been setting up for the last few, and to be honest, I'm still moving things around, but hopefully things will start crystallizing by the end of the month. I'm getting closer to something workable, trying to stay flexible, but going forward, there are definitely some immutables.

One of the big hard-fasts for this year is to get my SFG Kettlebell LI Certification, which some of you may recall I had slated for last November. Well, November came and went, and my snatch test time was hovering around 6m30s-ish. Given that the overall cost of the trip would've been around 3000 and the recommended standard going in is "plus two minutes", which either means seven minutes or three minutes, neither of which I was confident about (especially the latter), I didn't want to bet all that cash and a weekend on hoping I had a good day. That in mind, I'm planning my training around Brett Jones's SFG Kettlebell Certification Prep Guide. Simple, straightforward, and hopefully effective.

Ironically (extra points for proper use), I'm not even sure what I'm going to do with my SFG Cert, but I think it'll be a good thing to have. I know quite a few folks who are interested in being high-performance, and I'm a firm believer that kettlebells are the way to get there, at least for the levels that most people are trying to achieve, so who knows? For now, I just want to live through the event.

..."get ready to face the floor"

This puts me in a good place mentally by giving me some breathing room to do other training, because there was no way I was going to give up my mat time this year. Towards the end of last year, I was only doing Kajukenbo, and oddly enough, not training all my other styles really affected my Kaju negatively. Well, that's not true, I've always held that I don't train a specific style, I train my style, and if I only train one style, then my style suffers.

I don't think combatives training is going to be an issue this year, it's funny, thanks to a seemingly innocuous post on one of my Facebook groups, 2015 started off at a dead sprint, but then, I didn't actually do anything for NYE, so being able to get up and train on Day One was a great opportunity and a really cool way to set the tone for what's coming. I'm going to go on record and say the best training decision I've made for this cycle is to just fuck everything and get to 10th Planet San Mateo as often as I can. Ditto Systema and Silat, I went back to Systema last week and you know, there's just nothing like that feeling of being free. THAT'S the thing my style has suffered from most, it's almost like for the last couple of months I've had this fear of movement, and for a time I'd forgotten how to breathe. And you know what happens when you stop breathing and stop moving...(hint: you're probably dead). It's cliche to say, but it's like being born again. After birth comes life, time to get to it.

I'm going to finish by leaving this video here, I actually found it while writing this and the overall tone, well, the overall tone as I perceive it, is something I've been thinking about since sometime last year. But as I've already rambled, ranted, and raved enough for this post, we'll have to discuss it next time. That said, I'm going to go grill some sausages and finish eating. Eat food, lift weights, and MOVE YOUR ASS.